Cool to see this on HN! I worked in a lab (CSUS) for several years researching HD Cells and Place Cells with JL Calton. The methods were quite crude - cut a ho

Cool to see this on HN! I worked in a lab (CSUS) for several years researching HD Cells and Place Cells with JL Calton. The methods were quite crude - cut a hole in a rat's head, screw a staging contraption onto the head of the rat, and send a less-than-hair-width electrode lead into the hippocampus. Day by day or week by week, tighten a screw 1/4 turn to send the electrode down. Then have the rat run a maze or do some kind of task, and "listen" on an oscilloscope for the cells or circuits of interest firing. Once we found the HD cells or Place Cells, we could apply some kind of drug to attempt to interfere with the cell's activity.